


I'm Gonna Ask You To Look Away

by orphan_account



Series: A Basketful of First-Times [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, Depression, Dreams and Nightmares, Forbidden Love, Force Ghost(s), Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad Ending, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Stream of Consciousness, Suicide, Survivor Guilt, The Author Regrets Everything, Very little dialogue, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2020-12-31 16:55:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21149060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Qui-Gon pushes through the pain because a little boy, so much like his Padawan once was--so full of fear, of buried anger, of uncertainty--needshim. But when Anakin becomes a Knight--and Qui-Gon a Master no more--the facade comes crashing down.Or: "I'm gonna ask you to look away.I love my hands, but it hurts to pray.Life I have isn't what I've seen:The sky's not blue and the field's not green.. . .I'm gonna ask you to look away.My broken life will never stay.Tried too hard and I always lay.Days are greyand the nights are black . . ."





	I'm Gonna Ask You To Look Away

**Author's Note:**

> I should be writing the third chapter of ["If Your Burdened Soul"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069374/chapters/47530993) . . . which means (let's be honest) fluff and making love and FLUFF. But instead, my brain and a song gave me . . . _this_.
> 
> Thanks, Moby.
> 
> **The tags exist for a very good reason.** It wasn't my intent for the story to become what it is, but here we are. This piece deals heavily with depression and suicide, among other things. If reading this story would in any way be harmful to you--please, please don't. <3
> 
> The title and "Or" are from ["Wait For Me"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuseG4MoZyY). (I can't recommend this heartwrenching song and video enough.)
> 
> Comments and thoughts are ever and always appreciated; thank you so much for reading, and I do hope you . . . well. I don't think this is enjoyable. But. Thank you for reading, nonetheless. <3

The singed hair of the severed braid smells like the smoke from Obi-Wan’s pyre, and Qui-Gon has to force a meager smile—something sacrilegious—for the young man kneeling at his feet. Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker . . .

And in that moment—peacefully, for this is right, is as it should be, is the natural way of things—the bond between them dissolves; two energies within the Force, diverging: the Padawan and Master equal now. Qui-Gon shudders; another blow is struck; he has never known the severance thus. Xanatos had _wrenched_ himself free with the hatred and violence of the Dark Side, and the result was agony, was a wound that took ten years to heal—took Obi-Wan—and then—

_No._

No, this moment in the pitch-dark Council chambers belongs solely to Anakin, his face aglow by the light of thirteen sabers there: upturned, expectant, so full of youth and promise and hope. Even in the midst of war, he bears the Light Side of the Force into all the dark places: rumor has it that he will become a general in this cataclysmic chaos soon. That he, a boy of no more than nineteen, will lead cloned men unto the jaws of death against machines.

Qui-Gon blinks. This is as it should be . . . is it not? Ten years ago had he not proclaimed he’d train the boy—even if it meant his expulsion from the Order? Would that he had known then . . . oh . . . the true depths of the pain he caused his Padawan . . . and then . . .

_No. Focus only on the here-and-now . . ._

Has he not done this—trained the boy? Has this moment not been that on which he’d hung his hopes, the last thing to which he’d clung after Naboo—that the Chosen One fulfill his destiny, wherever the Force may lead?

Yes.

And no.

He blinks again, and for a moment those blue eyes gazing up into his own do not belong to Anakin at all.

The air still reeks of smoke, of burning hair, and bile creeps acrid fingers up his throat.

* * *

The room is dark, save the slanting glow from Coruscant, the neon-gleaming glitter-jeweled world, the planet-capitol, the sprawling amalgamation of currents of languid and desperate and oh-so-fleeting life. The room is still, save his breathing, the hammering of blood in his veins, a frayed and fraught staccato. And the room, like his mind—for the first time in twenty years—is empty. No reassuring ripples through the Force; no thoughts to gently touch his own; no quiet reassurance of another being sprawled on the other sleep-couch there against the wall.

Yes—he is alone.

He has slipped half-into fitful dreams and come to himself with a start and given up on sleep. He lies upon the floor, cool stone a balm against his heated skin.

He buries his head in his Padawan’s robe—a secret he’s kept carefully hidden (although he suspects well enough that Master Yoda knows). It’s said that a Jedi should have no secrets, should have nothing whatsoever to hide, no attachments to people or places or _things_, but Qui-Gon has never been one for mindless stipulations. And so he had wrapped Obi-Wan’s body in his own darker shroud and kept the young man's for himself. Impractical, of course, for the robe is much too small to wear, but . . . ah . . . there were no questions from the Quartermaster when he requested a new garment . . .

It smells like him and _feels_ like him: the imprinted energy of his being palpable even now, even in the gaudy-clad night a decade later . . .

_<I wish you were here.>_

A thread of thought, no more: tremulous, half-formed, of far less substance than the flickering fledgling dreams that had haunted him as night crept across the sky. He shivers, hands reflexively clenching in the fabric of Obi-Wan’s robe, his knuckles waxing white, the veins and scars weaving a weary topography of flesh: a life hard-lived.

Silence.

Of course Obi-Wan won’t answer, because Obi-Wan is dead.

* * *

Sometime near dawn, he dreams as he has not dreamed since Theed . . . Or perhaps only his thoughts, unleashed at last for loneliness, bear him to this place of liminal awareness and the shadows of sensations: he never slips from consciousness, never loses the play of the rising Coruscanti sun against his eyes, or the stone beneath his flesh, or the bitter softness of Obi-Wan’s robe on his cheek . . .

_<Obi-Wan . . . >_

And yet—

_A quirk-lipped smile—shy and cheeky and brazen by turn—that endearing contradiction the young man so often was._

_Qui-Gon flings himself into those open arms, lets himself be carried on the decibels of his Padawan’s laughter, lets himself be borne into the unknown by the half-glances they’d known well enough in life, the subtle touches, the kindled longing that was far too bright for them to look at—no—and so they did not dare to look—_

_They were Code-bound then and oh—and oh—who can ever return to darkness who has seen the light?_

_But now it becomes a softly-measured sweet brushing of lips and pulses pounding out the strain of life and Obi-Wan’s body clasped in his arms and oh need-slickened cocks and slipping, frantic friction and heat and hardness and cries that might well be for all life or might be all the grief he cannot bear, all while Obi-Wan whispers secrets to him that he cannot understand, laced with love-song moans—_

Qui-Gon strokes himself with a kind of violent recklessness—sacrilegious (as so much has seemed) to the dreamed-of half-caught act of love with Obi-Wan that never was—oh, _Force_, would that it had been—not for the orgasm that seizes his body whole, that tears from him a shout as if of pain—oh, no—

More than that—far more—

Ten years it’s been since he’s so much as dreamed as such or touched himself, his last offering to Obi-Wan who suffered through his adolescence and early twenties thus, who bore his needs with stoic deference . . . Qui-Gon’s body quickens to a cadence of lust and release and lust again—again and again, even when there is nothing more to give and the pleasure is hollow and bestial and naught but yet another way to bury his grief—

And his mind buries the reality about him and casts it to shades of what can never be, while he himself can only bury his head in his Padawan’s robe and scream.

And for just a moment, then, he stares at his cum-covered hand and finds that it’s covered instead with Obi-Wan’s blood.

* * *

He sits in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, the babbling of waters in myriad tongues some vain attempt at easing the silence in his head, as if they offer solace and good company. They don’t, nor do the few Jedi who are up before the the broken dawn, who come here to meditate in the gathering light of Coruscant’s sun.

He does not know how much time is passed. Anakin has become a General, just as the rumors said, and occasionally snippets of equal truth reach him about the boy’s exploits in the field: song-strung heroics set to jaunty tunes that so polish and gleam that horrid mechanation War that all who hear them will know _nothing_ of what it really is: of blood and sweat and vomitus and excrement and death. Screams that echo, always, so that no crystalline song from laughing waters or a glowing crystal’s strength or even the Force can silence it.

Death, too, can be still and soft—even the violent ones, the lives given to the blade.

Obi-Wan had gasped at the killing-blow but made no sound, not really, and it had taken Qui-Gon moments afterwards to realize that it was he, himself, who’d screamed . . .

He buries his hands in the soil, half-consciously tearing at the tender roots of the the little seedlings straining towards the sun. Something in the Force cries out, stirs him, and with a measure of ever-gathering self-hatred he wraps the weapons of his hands into the sleeve-safety of his robes.

* * *

The days and nights bleed; no amount of sun washes the grey from the sky; no amount of gaudy glaring light strikes the night any shade but black. Qui-Gon moves through the Temple, a shadow; he sees the other Knights surround him, hears their whispers, senses, unseen, the eyes of the Council upon him, feels them all, all trying to _reach_ for him, to draw him back from whatever vortex unto which he finds himself flung.

He tries, at first.

He rises before dawn and pretends to meditate with Yoda, who often says nothing, needs say nothing. The truth is there in the ancient hand that always comes to rest atop his own. He knows now that Yoda knew, but even the Grand Master does not know just what to do with love.

He spars with Master Windu, but more and more often a violet blade leeches smearing into red and a servant of Light becomes an acolyte of Darkness and Qui-Gon can do no more than drop to his knees, speechless, silent, screaming-pleading through the Force for his Padawan’s life and shaking, shaking, shaking.

The Healers lure him to the dining hall three times a day. Gentle hands ladle food onto his plate, and mechanically he eats. It all tastes like ash—even the sweet pastries Obi-Wan so loved—and a bit of charred meat left too long to the flames is enough to make him retch.

* * *

She comes to him one day, and it strikes him that he hasn’t moved from the stone-cool floor: that Coruscant has turned about him without his paying it a mind. _His_ mind. The room he shared with Obi-Wan, with Anakin, mausoleum-still: the silence: the echoes: the whispers of the dead, as on Melida/Daan. He slips in and out of dreams and trances, dancing in flickers of Light and tendrils of Darkness: once he felt the Force and now—and now—now he doesn’t know, except that he’s beginning to understand well enough, for all practical intent, what Yoda means when he refers to the body as nothing but crude matter.

But is he luminous?

He doesn’t know.

Not any more.

He is a Jedi—and oh, and oh, how far he has fallen.

He wraps himself in his robe at the sound of her footfalls, the presence of her through the Force that otherwise he hardly feels—hears but distantly, like bells—but oh, she comes as cool water, comes as something so indescribably gentle and steadfast that even those not sensitive to the currents of the galaxy and life could have unwavered faith in her . . .

Obi-Wan comes to him in the night, speckle-lighted heartsong, whispering those secrets that he will never understand, the truths that run through his hands like water through his fingers . . . ah . . .

But now it’s day and she who comes, not Obi-Wan.

But near enough she seems: he knows she was always his Padawan’s dearest.

His best friend and the center of his heart and, in some way, his love. Somewhere in-between, perhaps; Qui-Gon was never sure, for there are many ways to love . . .

His fingers twitch spasmodically, vague awareness coming to him now of the fact that he has not bathed or eaten in some faint, vain stroke of time. That the savage beast of lust—better lust to feel than grief? So it seems, so fragile terrible it seems; some last vestige of self-deception left—has seized him in the nights and he is nothing but a tangled mess of flesh grown soft and the splattered seedling fatherstuff half-dried against the floor.

Tenderly she helps him to his feet, and he cannot look her in the eyes—those bright, deep, silver eyes—and when he finds that he can hardly stand it’s her arms which keep him from crashing to the floor again—wrought with durasteel, all cartiledge and sinew and bone—

The arms which held his Padawan so often. The hands which dried his tears.

He chokes her name in a hoarse-voiced cry, tongue stifled-thick, head pounding. She smells of innumerable seas and there is a saltiness against his lips, like tidal spray.

Bant offers him her gentle smile, a thousand soft-unspoken promises that have nothing at all to do with hollow hopes—and that truth of hers, so softly-spoken: what would his Padawan wish of him—_for _him—if he must now feel, at last, ten years of buried grief? Not and never this—and well enough she knows. She loved Obi-Wan as well, and it has not been lost upon Qui-Gon how much his death has cost her, too.

* * *

But she is not enough.

* * *

Bant never stops coming to offer him some strain of dignity: to wash him and feed him—by her own webbed hands, if the need should be—but soon he can see in her eyes that she knows he’s gone somewhere far beyond her reach . . .

He sinks roots down into the void, nothing to nourish, no ground on which to stand . . . sinking deeper and deeper, drawn into a Sith-wrought hell: some place from which there is no escape.

The Darkness wears down his defenses, one by one—and grey day into pitch-black night he feels himself surrender. Only now does he realize that to fall is such a _quiet_ thing—for it does not happen with finality, as if he reaches within himself to snuff out the Light.

Ah. No.

But his aching for the silence filled, chasing the fleeting phantom that dances through his dreams and seems, always, just at the corners of his sight. The touch that quickens his blood and offers him refuge, kindling some counterpoint to nightmares, to terror and blood and the smell of burning flesh. The voice that whispers in his ears, unheard for ten long years.

Inward, inward: he curls in upon himself, the tremulous waver of a cracked-note song.

* * *

_<I should have died with him . . . >_

He does not dream, now, of holding his Padawan, of making love. No: his dreams now, if not nightmares, are no different but for one detail: that the crimson blade lashes out to kiss him, too, and the last thing he sees is Obi-Wan’s face—the last thing he feels amidst the pain is the clasping of their hands—their pulses beating out a stuttered thread in time—journeying together into the unknown.

The thought has come, unbidden, and he blinks through the haze of shadowplay across the room, wondering how he’s supposed to find the strength within himself to refute it, to reach yet again for the Light he cannot see, when he hasn’t even strength to wipe away the wetness from his cheek.

* * *

_<I should have died with him . . . >_

Qui-Gon turns his lightsaber over in his grasp. Once as much a part of him as his hand, his arm—the blade an extension of his body—not merely his flesh but spirit, but every cell within him singing of the Force.

Now the act of holding it gathers revulsion at his throat.

The blade that cut the braid of Anakin Skywalker, when it should have been Obi-Wan Kenobi’s first.

The blade that in Dark vengeance slew a Sith Lord with _sai tok._

The blade that could not defend his Padawan.

* * *

_<I should have died with him.>_

The lightsaber is clenched within his hand so tightly it feels as if the alloy pours itself into his bones. He reaches for the Force, for the components that he had spent days in meditation so carefully, lovingly setting aright—for the crystal that sang to him such a sweet song through the caves of Ilum—soft, soft green, like growing things—oh—

He has betrayed the crystal that sang with his heart’s song. He has betrayed even the components that became the hilt, became the blade.

His thumb has come to rest, many times, over the activation switch.

He frowns, staring at the hilt, the grip that bites into his palm.

He remembers how Obi-Wan’s lightsaber looked so much like his own . . . so strong, it seemed, was strung their bond . . . long before Obi-Wan grew into a man . . . long before Qui-Gon had realized the depths of his Padawan's beauty—or his love.

He has done much, already, to desecrate the blade.

He knows now that there is no such thing as dying with honor.

Death is death.

But he has done much to desecrate the blade.

His thumb shivers there against the switch, and he can feel the crystal crying out, that drop of life. He can feel the Light warring with the Darkness—in his blood, his bones—and he bows his head, half-choked with tears and mucus and a savage tightness in his throat. Convulsively a sob catches in his ribs, tears itself upwards, some broken, shattered sound

shattered

and

he should have died with Obi-Wan

and

he loved him

he should have said he loved him

and

Qui-Gon _reaches_ into the weapon that was once his life, reaching into it as a courseless black river—roiling, raging, dashing him against the rocks no matter if he tries to swim against or with the current—ah—he welcomes it, welcomes the pain, welcomes the darkness and the agony—

And the river crashes through him, crashes through the lightsaber in his hand with nothing short of unholy, savage vindication, wrenching it apart, and from somewhere distant he hears a haunting, keening cry—his own—he thinks—

In a burst of metal and crystal and lenses and a thousand hand-picked sacred parts the hilt of the lightsaber shatters, a flare of energy, so bright, a million slivered daggers and fleet-lived sparks to pierce his hands—he glances down, unconscious of the pain—yes, blood-covered after all—

And he sits there for a long time, still. And bows his head, tresses of silvered-copper unkempt hair shielding him as if a shroud, only now half-realizing that his breathing is much too slow and his heart is weak. The madly spinning world around him is very dim indeed.

It will not be long, and Qui-Gon is a patient man.

He waits.

* * *

_The figure in the doorway takes in the scene at once: the scattered remnants of a lightsaber, the half-cracked hilt, the fragments of a crystal the color of life—but there is no life within it now._

_And the man, slumped there on the floor._

_Tenderly he picks his way through the wreckage, reverently tiptoeing through the aftermath of such grief, such loss, that breaks his heart. Yes—hearts break—and not everything can be put back together in the end._

_He kneels down, touching a cheek, brushing back the hair that he’d so often longed to tangle in his hands. The face is still, as if something that has not quite lived . . . something that is a shell of life . . . or less even than that . . . less than a statue . . ._

_Tears blur his eyes and he gathers the man into his arms (when has he ever been such skin and bones?) and the tears spill over and he weeps and places his lips against his forehead, tasting sweat and unwashed skin and salt there upon his cheeks that reminds him of his dearest._

_Dearest—yes—but not beloved._

_No. _

_His beloved was always—_

_Gently, gently, he rocks the man to the rhythm of the sobs that wrack his frame._

<Master.>

**Author's Note:**

> Qui-Gon's shattering his lightsaber has nothing to do with the current canon surrounding kyber crystals (kick-started by Filoni and picked up by Disney). Not sure if anyone else cares about this point at all, but I've been officially branded "a Star Wars Snob", so . . . I do. ;)


End file.
